[google-sheets] QUERY syntax using cell reference

I'm having trouble figuring out a fairly simple QUERY statement in Google Spreadsheets. I'm trying to use a cell reference instead of static values and I'm running into trouble. Below it the code I'm using, but I keep getting a "Error: Formula parse error."

=QUERY(Responses!B1:I, "Select B where G contains"& $B1 &)

I'm sure it is a simple error, but can someone please show me how to write the above so the QUERY is pulling data from B where G contains the value in cell B1 (cell reference)?

I know this is an old thread but I had the same question as the OP and found the answer:

You are nearly there, the way you can include cell references in query language is to wrap the entire thing in speech marks. Because the whole query is written in speech marks you will need to alternate between ' and " as shown below.

What you would need is this:

=QUERY(Responses!B1:I, "Select B where G contains '"& B1 &"' ")

If you then wanted to refer to multiple cells you could add more like this

=QUERY(Responses!B1:I, "Select B where G contains '"& B1 &"' and G contains '"& B2 &"' ")

The above would filter down your results further based on the contents of B1 and B2.

Here is working code: =QUERY(Sheet1!$A1:$B581, "select B where A = '"&A1&"'")

In this scenario I needed the interval to stay fixed and the reference value to change when I drag it.

I found out that single quote > double quote > wrapped in ampersands did work. So, for me it looks like this:

=QUERY('Youth Conference Registration'!C:Y,"select C where Y = '"&A1&"'", 0)

Copied from Web Applications:

=QUERY(Responses!B1:I, "Select B where G contains '"&$B1&"'")

Old Thread but I found this on my journey to the below answer and figure someone else might need it too.

=IFERROR(ArrayFormula(query(index(Sheet3!A:C&""),"select* Where Col1="""&B1&""" ")), ARRAYFORMULA({"*     *","no cells","match"}));

Here is a simply built text Filter from a 3 column data set (A,B and C) located in "sheet3" into the current sheet and calling a comparison to a cell from the current sheet to filter within Col1(A).

This bit is just to get rid of the #N/A error if the filter turns up no results //ARRAYFORMULA({"* *","no cells","match"}))

To make it work with both text and numbers:

Exact match:

=query(D:E,"select * where D like '"&C1&"'", 0)

Convert search string to lowercase:

=query(D:E,"select * where D like lower('"&C1&"')", 0)

Convert to lowercase and contain part of the search string:

=query(D:E,"select * where D like lower('%"&C1&"%')", 0)

A1                = query/formula
yellow / A:B  = result area
green / C1    = search area
blue / D:E     = data area

If you get error when the input is text and not numbers; move the data and delete the (now empty) columns. Then move the data back.

none of the above answers worked for me. This one did:

=QUERY(Copy!A1:AP, "select AP, E, F, AO where AP="&E1&" ",1)